It is no secret that maintaining the integrity of free and fair elections depends, in part, on maintaining the right to cast secret ballots. This right ensures that voters are able to express their preferences without undue influence or fear of reprisal. It is also a right recognized in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has long been part of the American democratic fabric.

But perhaps for not much longer. Congress, at the behest of organized labor, is preparing to undercut the ability of workers to vote in secret ballot elections.

Under the "Employee Free Choice Act," which has already passed the House and is being debated by the Senate this week, the rules overseeing how unions are formed would radically change. Currently, union organizers must first win an election. Under this legislation, the privacy of the voting booth would give way to signature drives run by union activists. These activists would be free to knock on any worker's door at home whenever they wish and, once they collected signatures from a majority of workers, the union would be certified, start collecting dues and engage in collective bargaining.

This change would come notwithstanding that right now it is not difficult for a union to become a bargaining representative, provided that a majority of workers want it. Presently, if 30% of the employees in a workplace express an interest in union representation, the National Labor Relations Board supervises a secret-ballot election. The bill repeals protections enacted 60 years ago to shield workers from coercion by unions and from employers.

It is incredible that interest groups who say they are advocates for workers are striving to end workers' opportunity to have private union elections. Coincidentally, or not, unionization has shrunk in the past 50 years, from 35% of the private sector workforce in the 1950s, to 7.4% today.

Without the protection of secret ballot elections, American workers would have no protection from coercion. One does not need to be a scholar on card check to anticipate the pressure and coercion that could then emanate from all sides. Indeed, a former union organizer testified at a congressional hearing recently that she had "personally heard from workers that they signed the union card simply to get the organizer to leave their home and not harass them further."

Under this legislation, deciding to get someone off of your doorstep could come to alter life at your workplace.

The issue of whether workers should sign cards or cast ballots has been around for quite a long time. In 1967, a federal circuit court observed: "It would be difficult to imagine a more unreliable method of ascertaining the real wishes of employees than a 'card check,' unless it were an employer's request for an open show of hands. The one is no more reliable than the other . . ."

But this legislation isn't just about unionizing workplaces. It is also being pushed along, as the bill states, "for other purposes."

The most pernicious of these other purposes is a provision that will undermine the freedom to collectively bargain. Under the bill, if an initial union contract is not agreed to within a congressionally-dictated timetable, federal officials could designate an "arbitration board" to write a contract that employers and workers must abide by for two years. Workers would not have any right to ratify, or reject, that contract.

Where is the "free choice" in depriving workers of privacy in choosing whether to vote for a union to represent them? Where is the "free choice" in denying workers the right to vote, at all, on federally-dictated labor contracts? The scope of this assault on workers' rights and economic freedom is breathtaking.

Ms. Chao is the U.S. Secretary of Labor.

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